Ten Years of Debate

Ten Years of Debate—Memoirs on Sino-Soviet Relations 1956-1966 by Wu Lengxi (1919-2002) was published by the Central Literature Publishing House in 1999. In this book, Wu Lengxi, who was an eyewitness (he was then the president of Xinhua News Agency, etc.) due to his position, explains the relations between the two parties before and after the Sino-Soviet polemic and reflects the main course of the Sino-Soviet polemic, which mainly revolved around a series of polemics on the internal relations of socialist parties and socialist states, relations with imperialism, and on how to build socialism since the death of Stalin and the rise of Khrushchev to power. As an eyewitness to this period, the author gives an account of what he witnessed to be the historical truth. The 17 chapters in the book deal with the shock caused by the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956, the events in Poland and Hungary, the Moscow Conference in 1957, the talks before and after the 1959 Camp David Talks between the top leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union, Khrushchev's surprise attack on the Communist Party of China at the Warsaw Pact summit in 1960, the review and decision at the 1960 Beidaihe Conference on the relationship between the two parties, the review of the Soviet Union's decision to put struggle over the expansion of ideological differences between the two parties to the practice of state relations, the struggle and compromise between the 81 communist and workers' parties at the Moscow Conference in 1960,

Khrushchev's renewed challenge at the Twenty-Second Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1961, the move towards open polemics between China and the Soviet Union, the two general lines on the international communist movement, the Sino-Soviet Talks in 1963, the great open polemics between the two parties in 1963, the 1963 mediation of the Romanian Communist Party delegation, the new anti-Chinese campaign of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , the publication of the Ninth Review of the Communist Party of China in 1964, the sharp turn of events, the stepping down of Khrushchev, and the move of Sino-Soviet relations toward division rather than splitting. According to the author, "The whole decade from March 1956 to March 1966 was the decade when Sino-Soviet relations went from warm to cold. Ideological differences between the Chinese and Soviet parties developed to the deterioration of state-to-state relations between the two countries. The CPC, despite a series of efforts, was ultimately unable to prevent the Soviet leadership from pushing relations toward a split. In the middle of the heated polemic, our Party put forward a series of arguments. Although some of them, influenced by the situation at the time, were questionable. It was necessary and fruitful for our Party to persist in the struggle against the revisionism of the Soviet leadership, especially chauvinism of the great powers. Many of the arguments put forward by our Party in the polemic that were not addressed by the classic writers of Marxism in the past will probably be debated in the world for another hundred years, and in the future history will have to draw the conclusions."